… trains and … planes …

On Saturday I returned from a trip I'd made to the UK to attend the OEs' Bristol dinner and to visit Candy and Quinn.
  I'm in rather better physical shape than either my Bristol host, Sam Jefferies - he's been recently diagnosed with Deep Vein Thrombosis - or Sam's other guest, Eccles Vincent, who's recently had a triple heart by-pass. However, as a quick glance at my vacant stare in the photo at the top of the page will confirm, the same cannot be said for my mental state.
  I don't normally talk to my fellow travellers on planes or trains but was given little choice on the second leg of my journey from Bristol to March. Having changed trains at Birmingham I sat next to a student bound for Cambridge and opposite a man in his forties. As soon as I was seated he said, "Why has your hair got no colour?"
  "Because I'm old," I replied. "Yours'll be the same when you reach my age."
  "I don't think so," he replied in a Dublin accent. He was drunk, but not aggressively so, and over the next half an hour or so his life-story emerged. He'd been taken into care at 12, had been living rough for the past five years and had seen the inside of a large number of English and Irish gaols. On Friday he'd been released from Gloucester prison. On Sunday he was arrested in Cheltenham for being drunk and disorderly. Having spent the night in the cells, the magistrate before whom he'd appeared had given him a train ticket to Corby where he had some acquaintances. I learned we shared a christian name and a religion. I didn't begrudge giving him the pound he solicited before he changed trains at Leicester. Neither did the student sitting next to me. Despite his frequent profanities, a well-spoken elderly woman sitting across the aisle gave him some cash without being asked. He didn't  pretend to be anything other than a irredeemable alcoholic or ask for pity, but he certainly evoked it.
    Having had one conversation on a train I made the fatal mistake of having a second. After a pleasant few days with Candy and Quinn - I saw Richard and Jane on Tuesday morning who gave me lunch; Matthew and Charley came to Candy's for dinner the same evening;

on Thursday evening Candy, Quinn and I had dinner at the Crown; and on Friday morning  I went round to see Linda and Shen - Candy took me to Downham station early on Saturday morning. I began chatting to a woman in her sixties on the platform and, having carried her suitcase onto the train bound for King's Cross and stowed my own safely in the luggage-rack, we carried on our conversation. Widowed the same year that  Pat and I moved to Italy, she was on her way to spend one of her twice yearly holidays with her son who had moved to Florida a couple of weeks before his father's unexpected death. Gathering up my hat, scarf and man-bag I bade her farewell at Cambridge where I had to change trains for Stansted. Strolling down the platform and eyeing the closed refreshment kiosks - it was still only 6.30 - I was brought up short by the tannoy warning passengers to keep their luggage with them at all times. With a sickening feeling I realised that mine was heading for King's Cross, snugly ensconced in the luggage rack where I'd left it.
   Fortunately my 'moment of madness' had a happy outcome. Cambridge Station 'Communication Centre' rang King's Cross who phoned Candy when they'd retrieved the case. When Shen returned from visiting his mother in London he brought my case back with him and Pat will bring it home in early December. But I strongly advise my elderly readers to avoid engaging widder-wimmin in conversation when travelling by public transport; instead focus your few remaining mental powers on remembering to take your luggage with you when you alight!